


Training

by Bloody_Destination



Series: Dark Ace Series of Connected Drabbles [4]
Category: Storm Hawks (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Kid Dark Ace, Original Storm Hawks, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-10 04:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19900150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloody_Destination/pseuds/Bloody_Destination
Summary: Ace is learning to move on with the Storm Hawks.





	Training

Lightning, Ace comes to learn, is a hero amongst Sky Knights. He’s strong and young and charismatic enough to help band together the other Sky Knights under one banner. The man has energy for days and a smile just a bright. The man can pilot almost anything, and his fighting skills are unbeatable.

What Ace also comes to learn is that Lightning also sucks at teaching. He doesn’t know where to start on most topics, where most skills just came naturally. He sucks at explaining basic concepts and he makes outlandish hand gestures where none are required. He uses made up names instead of actual names, especially during lessons on skimmer repairs.

“This thing-a-maggiger, you see here.” Spark plug, Ace wants to say, but doesn’t, because Lightning also has trouble remembering what Ace tells him, whether by choice or not, “The thing-a-maggiger goes in the spring thingy, you see?”

Ace raises an eyebrow, or rather, just leaves it up, because from the first words out of that man’s mouth, his brow has been as high as his hair line. Ace doubts he’s lowered it since. Ace is familiar with the part names. His mother made sure to teach him in case of emergencies. While he knows how to fix most of a skimmer, how to hotwire one and a half a dozen other tricks, just watching is something that helps Ace with things he didn’t know. Lighting has shown him how to build a Crystal generator from scratch, has shown him what types of Crystals are good for what type of skimmer, or how to jerry rig a skimmer to take a Crystal not so good for a skimmer and make it so.

If he could just watch, instead of having to hear the outlandish explanations and stupid, made up names, he would be in far better standing than he is now. He makes sure to remind the red head of this after every lesson.

Thankfully, Lightning isn’t his only teacher. The Condor’s Pilot, named Joshi is the actual mechanic for the Condor and keeps the ship afloat. She’s short and pale and her blonde, nearly white hair, is covered in grease half the time. She’s also very muscular and puts fear into Lightning whenever she catches the man trying to teach Ace something new about mechanics. They go into battle often enough with very little time to stop for repairs so when that happens, Joshi takes Ace with her to whatever damage has been done and puts him to work.

She also lets him pilot the Condor sometimes. He’s so used to the controls by now, nearly sixth months since getting taken in by the Storm Hawks, that he’s practically up at the helm almost as much as Joshi is. He’s taken the controls during battles as well, when the Condor is too damaged, and Joshi needs to make an immediate repair. She calls him a natural and the only other person on the ship she’d let the controls to during a battle. Coming from her, it means a lot, because Wing had been injured just a few weeks ago and she’d still chosen Ace to pilot the Carrier while she’d gone to fix Emala’s broken Heliscooter that had crashed on the Condor’s Hull.

Not to say that Wing wasn’t also a good teacher. He was a pilot second best to Lightning himself. Good at flashy moves and an excellent distraction when needed. He was also a great medic, which was kind of ironic considering the man got injured more than anyone else on the carrier. But then, Ace supposed, with how often he got injured was probably the reason why he was such a good medic.

He taught ace how to wrap a wound, set a splint, sew a gash and dozens of other nifty tricks needed at a moments notice. He also showed him different plants and Crystals that could be used for healing, let Ace borrow a few books on the subject, quizzed him even.

Ace tried to learn from Emala, the resident Crystal Mage, but after only one lesson, Ace abandoned it all together. While the idea of Crystals fascinated Ace, the idea of an even worse teacher than Lightning did not. While Lightning over simplified thing, Emala over complicated. As soon as the woman had gotten ace alone, she had delved right into Crystal Theory of which Ace was completely confused by within the first minute, possibly even worsening his knowledge on Crystals.

Then came Nimbus, another of the Storm Hawk’s wingmen, next to Wing. The man was the youngest on the team, just past twenty years of age but extremely smart, genius level since he was Ace’s age. Apparently, before becoming a Sky Knight, Nimbus had wanted to be a teacher, coming from a family with four younger sibling and all. Ace doesn’t know what changed Nimbus’ views on being a teacher to wanting to become a Sky Knight, nor does he ask. But he picks up Ace’s schooling. Tests Ace a little before buying a few books on a Terra they stop at and settling down to teach Ace on about a dozen different subjects nearly every day.

Finally, comes Mick. Like most Atmosians, he has tan skin, though lighter than Wing, with brown hair, closer to the shade of wood. He’s not as tall as Wing, but he’s twice as wide, with muscles on top of muscles. He takes Ace to the gym every day, shows him exercises and puts him through drills suited to his body type. He shows how to efficiently take down an enemy of greater size and power. Ace knows he’s gotten lucky the last few times, with the Talon from half a year ago and from when he took down Wing. He’d been underestimated, but they both new if he was to stick with the Storm Hawks, he won’t always be underestimated.

Ace thinks on Lightning’s teaching skills again, when, in the middle of the night, during lulls in battles, when Lightning would knock on Ace’s door and the both of them would sneak into the hanger.

“I’d always wanted a co-pilot.” He winked then attaches the side car and the two take off.

Lightning was the greatest pilot to ever grace the Atmosian sky and it shows in every movement. Ace was a visual learner and quick at that. It nearly gave him a heart attack the first time Lightning flashed him a smile before jumping from his set midflight and onto the wing. The skimmer took a nose dive followed by Ace’s yelp of fear.

Over the winds, he could hear Lightning laughing, “What are you going to do, Ace? Think on your feet, kid.”

With shaking hands and an urge to close his eyes at the quickly approaching gaseous fog hiding the treacherous wastelands below, he removed himself from his own seat almost violently, scrambling for purchase on the smooth, oiled metal, wondering to himself how Lightning was so steady on the wing of the skimmer. The pilot seat was a lot bigger than the little side car he was used to, along with the skimmer’s steering handles.

It jerks almost painfully in his hands as he pulls up and shouts, “Are you insane!”

All he gets is a laugh, but it happens nearly every time they fly together now and despite how much Ace shouts at Lightning’s recklessness, he deeply enjoys it. The rush is amazing and he’s quickly becoming a decent pilot and he’s not even eight yet.

He knows what they are doing, with how much attention they give him daily. He has barely enough time to himself with lessons and training and repairs and nightly flies. But he knows the truth. They aren’t any closer to finding his mother than they were from the very first day he was brought onto the Condor. He has to admit though, if he were any normal nearly eight year old child, maybe it would have worked, but he’s beginning to realize he isn’t normal. Ace has already worked through three different grade levels in only six months, no normal kid should be able to repair a smoking hole on a Carrier close to blowing up. No kid his age, twice his age even, should be able to fly a skimmer with as much ease as a veteran pilot.

But he does all of this and more and he knows that by now, it is very likely that his mother is either dead or captured, because every where they go, they spread the word that the Storm Hawks are looking for a woman of her description, half Cyclonian, something that people would notice with the war going on and with a dozen other Sky Knight teams also on the lookout. But nothing and it’ll likely stay that way.

Ace thinks he could be happy here, though. He thinks he can protect these people that are slowly becoming his family, that have helped him at his lowest point and have asked for nothing in return. If only it would stay this way.


End file.
